As an alternative to Near Field Communication (NFC) which is a short-range wireless communication, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon using BLE is suggested. The BLE beacon provides location information and is commercialized in various fields including marketing, purchase, and automatic check-in.
An effective communication distance of the NFC is limited to about 4˜20 cm, whereas an effective communication distance of the NFC is expanding from about 5 cm˜50 m. The NFC needs to install a separate chip in every mobile communication terminal, whereas the BLE beacon enables the short-range wireless communication using a beacon merely with a BLE recognition function. Accordingly, the BLE beacon is more economical than the NFC and offers a wireless communication service even in a wide indoor space.
The recent Bluetooth version 4.0 enables synchronization with an unlimited number of mobile communication terminals, and the mobile communication terminal can embrace various electronic devices such as a smart phone or a tablet Personal Computer (PC). The electronic device can transmit and receive a beacon signal when a beacon application program is executed or when a user selects a particular icon of the beacon application program.
In the related art, when receiving a beacon signal from a beacon transmitter (TX) at a particular location, for example, a store or a movie theatre, the electronic device can extract a beacon identifier or a location identifier from the beacon signal, send the beacon identifier or the location identifier to a beacon server using wireless communication, and then download beacon information or location specific information from the beacon server.
As such, when the electronic device wirelessly communicates with the beacon server for every beacon signal reception from the beacon TX of the particular location, current location information of the electronic device can be exposed. As a result, user's privacy is not protected and a communication traffic with the beacon server increases. When the communication with the beacon server is interrupted, a particular function corresponding to the beacon signal cannot be executed.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.